I don't think the amount of years anyone has been watching telly has anything to do with it.

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Why not? My experience means I've long since passed the point of expecting anything from the tv companies.

Anyway, the point is, I'm not aggrieved by the recent scheduling decisions. Doctor Who is my favourite tv show, but I don't need it to be shown to me at any regular times. There's plenty of other things to do in the meantime. Whatever PR bullshit mind games Moffat likes to play, well that's not affecting me - I don't take it as a personal affront. I don't care. I'm happy when the programme comes back on, but there's loads more Doctor Who to occupy me the rest of the time.

I don't think the amount of years anyone has been watching telly has anything to do with it.

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Why not? My experience means I've long since passed the point of expecting anything from the tv companies.

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An old man sits on his porch rocker at dusk, smoking a pipe or doing something equally picturesque. His grandson sits on the porch floor beside him.

"Quite a storm we had last night," the old man says.

"Yep," his grandson replies. "Not out of the ordinary for December, though. More or less what you'd expect."

"Well, as to that, when you've been watching the weather as long as I have, you don't come to expect anything. Storms come back when they come back. Why, once it snowed like that in April."

The young man hesitates. "Did it, grandfather? That must have been quite a time. But still, you know, it doesn't usually snow in April, and it usually does in December. And they say storms come for a reason. The, um, weather experts, and all."

"Weather experts!" The old man snorts. "Thinking there's all these patterns to it, and they still get things wrong half the time! Don't you listen to them, my lad. Don't you bother!"

"But," the young buy continues after another pause, well aware that he's out of his depth when it comes to meteorology, "even when they get things wrong, can't they usually explain why? What changed unexpectedly, or what improbable thing happened that made their forecast go wrong? I mean, isn't there still a logic to it? And isn't the weather usually one way in one month and another way in another? Even if strange things happen sometimes?"

The old man smiles indulgently. "You'll see what I mean when you're older, my boy. My experience means I've long since passed the point of expecting anything from the weather."

Anyway, the point is, I'm not aggrieved by the recent scheduling decisions. Doctor Who is my favourite tv show, but I don't need it to be shown to me at any regular times. There's plenty of other things to do in the meantime. Whatever PR bullshit mind games Moffat likes to play, well that's not affecting me - I don't take it as a personal affront. I don't care. I'm happy when the programme comes back on, but there's loads more Doctor Who to occupy me the rest of the time.

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Has anyone in this thread claimed to be aggrieved, to be taking anything as a personal affront, or to need Doctor Who shown to them at regular times? It's possible to be sarcastically dismissive of PR bullshit mind games without feeling any of those things. I'm sure there are people out there in the dark corners of the Internet who do feel those things, and that's a little sad, but what's it got to do with the present discussion?

That's very disappointing. I knew the split season would be wrong. Is it Moffat pushing this or the BBC?

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I'm fairly certain the split season was Moffat's choice. I can't see BBC madating that such a short season be split up.

Besides, split seasons are more an American thing, and even then there's been debate for years as to whether it actually helps a show or hurts it. Splitting a season seems more like part of Moffat's agenda to make Doctor Who more appealing to Americans.

Of course, my main problem is that Doctor Who has had practically no presence at all in 2012. Five episodes, plus an upcoming Christmas special, three new novels, one of which was a novelization of an unaired script from 1979. A graphic novel which has actually been sitting on the back burner since Tennant's run and had to be updated to feature Smith instead of Tennant. Character Options was forced to create something new in order to have Doctor Who toys for Christmas. If it weren't for the steady stream of new DVDs from the classic era, you could say there was practically nothing from Doctor Who this year.

Besides, split seasons are more an American thing, and even then there's been debate for years as to whether it actually helps a show or hurts it. Splitting a season seems more like part of Moffat's agenda to make Doctor Who more appealing to Americans.

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We split seasons that are twice the size, simply because we don't allow for as much lead time before airing the first episode of the season as the BBC does. The split is causing BBC America headaches (and money for ads to get the viewers back come spring); it's not making anything more appealing...

We split seasons that are twice the size, simply because we don't allow for as much lead time before airing the first episode of the season as the BBC does. The split is causing BBC America headaches (and money for ads to get the viewers back come spring); it's not making anything more appealing...

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The BBC in general is causing BBC America headaches.

The BBC's inability to decide when "Asylum of the Daleks" was going to air made it almost impossible for BBC America to promote the season before it launched -- they couldn't produce posters, ads, commercials, etc., that had a specific date.

Specifically on the split seasons, BBC America doesn't have the budget for promoting both halves.

Also, on split seasons on American television in general...

We had a discussion at work about split seasons, and we were trying to figure out who to blame. (My coworkers were upset at the midseason break for The Walking Dead.) The thing is, no one's to blame. American television has always had split seasons, it's just that we never advertised them as such. Shows usually take a breather in the schedules during November and December. The networks use that as a time to put specials and other events on the schedule, while the programs can catch up productive-wise and build up another bank of episodes. It was always an informal thing, but shows like Battlestar formalized the broadcast break into a narrative break.

We had a discussion at work about split seasons, and we were trying to figure out who to blame. (My coworkers were upset at the midseason break for The Walking Dead.) The thing is, no one's to blame. American television has always had split seasons, it's just that we never advertised them as such. Shows usually take a breather in the schedules during November and December. The networks use that as a time to put specials and other events on the schedule, while the programs can catch up productive-wise and build up another bank of episodes. It was always an informal thing, but shows like Battlestar formalized the broadcast break into a narrative break.

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In the past, a show traditionally began in September, continued airing new episodes until the end of November, then took a break for December. After that, you could be guaranteed of new episodes in February, but otherwise the remainig episodes of the seasons would be stretched out so that the season could last until May.

These days the episodes are clumped together, which usually means splitting the season in two halves. With some shows like Lost and 24 it was felt that a mid-season split actually hurt them, and they actually did air all episodes consecutively, with a season starting in January and ending in May.

Maybe I'm ignorant here, but it does feel like BSG and the Stargates were the pioneers of the mid-season split with having mid-season cliffhangers. Hell, I'm fairly certain BSG started the tradition of releasing half-seasons on DVD.

We had a discussion at work about split seasons, and we were trying to figure out who to blame. (My coworkers were upset at the midseason break for The Walking Dead.) The thing is, no one's to blame. American television has always had split seasons, it's just that we never advertised them as such. Shows usually take a breather in the schedules during November and December. The networks use that as a time to put specials and other events on the schedule, while the programs can catch up productive-wise and build up another bank of episodes. It was always an informal thing, but shows like Battlestar formalized the broadcast break into a narrative break.

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In the past, a show traditionally began in September, continued airing new episodes until the end of November, then took a break for December. After that, you could be guaranteed of new episodes in February, but otherwise the remainig episodes of the seasons would be stretched out so that the season could last until May.

These days the episodes are clumped together, which usually means splitting the season in two halves. With some shows like Lost and 24 it was felt that a mid-season split actually hurt them, and they actually did air all episodes consecutively, with a season starting in January and ending in May.

Maybe I'm ignorant here, but it does feel like BSG and the Stargates were the pioneers of the mid-season split with having mid-season cliffhangers. Hell, I'm fairly certain BSG started the tradition of releasing half-seasons on DVD.

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I'm pretty sure Farscape did the Half Season splits before NuBSG was a twinkle in Moore's eye. In fact, when they promised to renew Farscape for S4 and S5 at the same time, they tried claiming that S4 part 2 was S5 to avoid looking as if they had backed out of the renewal for S5.

i miss the old days when the Beeb would wait for three years and then show all three years of an American show in one block, week in, week out. by the end of which, they'd probably have years four to seven to carry on with.

i miss the old days when the Beeb would wait for three years and then show all three years of an American show in one block, week in, week out. by the end of which, they'd probably have years four to seven to carry on with.

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That wouldn't be practical these days due to the readily available alternate methods people would turn to.

i miss the old days when the Beeb would wait for three years and then show all three years of an American show in one block, week in, week out. by the end of which, they'd probably have years four to seven to carry on with.

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That wouldn't be practical these days due to the readily available alternate methods people would turn to.

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It wasn't even practical back then, such as when the BBC turned down Next Generation ("I've seen it, it's awful," said BBC1 Controller Jonathan Powell. Actually, he'd watched the first 15 mins of Encounter at Farpoint, according to Private Eye), and then picked it the terrestrial rights after Sky had been running it for three years. Aside from the Sky showing, there'd been rental video releases of the whole of season one (bar two episodes... wonder if you can guess?) and sales of dual standard VHS players got a very noticeable boost around that time... :-)

We had a discussion at work about split seasons, and we were trying to figure out who to blame. (My coworkers were upset at the midseason break for The Walking Dead.) The thing is, no one's to blame. American television has always had split seasons, it's just that we never advertised them as such. Shows usually take a breather in the schedules during November and December. The networks use that as a time to put specials and other events on the schedule, while the programs can catch up productive-wise and build up another bank of episodes. It was always an informal thing, but shows like Battlestar formalized the broadcast break into a narrative break.

Click to expand...

In the past, a show traditionally began in September, continued airing new episodes until the end of November, then took a break for December. After that, you could be guaranteed of new episodes in February, but otherwise the remainig episodes of the seasons would be stretched out so that the season could last until May.

These days the episodes are clumped together, which usually means splitting the season in two halves. With some shows like Lost and 24 it was felt that a mid-season split actually hurt them, and they actually did air all episodes consecutively, with a season starting in January and ending in May.

Maybe I'm ignorant here, but it does feel like BSG and the Stargates were the pioneers of the mid-season split with having mid-season cliffhangers. Hell, I'm fairly certain BSG started the tradition of releasing half-seasons on DVD.

Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure Farscape did the Half Season splits before NuBSG was a twinkle in Moore's eye. In fact, when they promised to renew Farscape for S4 and S5 at the same time, they tried claiming that S4 part 2 was S5 to avoid looking as if they had backed out of the renewal for S5.

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The main problem with season breaks is not that they're there, but if they have enough episodes to cover it. Shows like TNG which had a solid 26 episodes to play with, they could split the show and you'd still have ~13 episodes before Christmas.

But shows these days like Game of Thrones or True Blood only have 12 episodes, so it makes sense not to split them - and they don't.

With Doctor Who having 14 episodes a year there really is no point splitting them (especially as the Xmas special is already separated from the group anyway).

i miss the old days when the Beeb would wait for three years and then show all three years of an American show in one block, week in, week out. by the end of which, they'd probably have years four to seven to carry on with.

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Yeah, we got Babylon 5 delayed by a season and a half, which effectively gave us seasons 1-3 back to back without breaks, an unbroken 68 weeks of the show (The Gathering was split into 2x 1 hour episodes at the start). Really helped me get into the story arc.